B. F. Skinner
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on the 20th of March 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father William Skinner worked as a lawyer while his mother Grace managed their household. Young Burrus became an atheist after a Christian teacher tried to assuage his fear of hell using stories from his grandmother. He found solace and friendship with Raphael Miller, whom he called Doc because his father was a doctor. The two boys set up a telegraph line between their houses to send messages to each other. They had to call each other on the telephone due to confusing messages sent back and forth during operation.
During one summer, Doc and Skinner started an elderberry business to gather berries and sell them door to door. They found that when they picked the ripe berries, the unripe ones came off the branches too. They built a device that was able to separate them. The device was a bent piece of metal to form a trough. They would pour water down the trough into a bucket. The ripe berries sank into the bucket and the unripe ones were pushed over the edge to be thrown away. This early tinkering foreshadowed his future career as an inventor who sought to control outcomes through mechanical means.
Skinner developed behavior analysis, especially the philosophy of radical behaviorism, in the early 1900s. This approach originated as a reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology. Traditional methods often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested experimentally. His philosophy assumed that behavior is a consequence of environmental histories of reinforcement. He distinguished two sorts of behavior which are controlled in different ways.
Respondent behaviors are elicited by stimuli and may be modified through respondent conditioning. Operant behaviors are emitted meaning that initially they are not induced by any particular stimulus. These behaviors are strengthened through operant conditioning where the occurrence of a response yields a reinforcer. Skinner believed that variation and selection explain how new behaviors arise. Shaping was his term for the gradual modification of behavior by the reinforcement of desired variations. He argued that superstitious behavior can arise when a response happens to be followed by reinforcement to which it is actually unrelated.
An operant conditioning chamber known as the Skinner box was invented while he was a graduate student at Harvard University. As used by Skinner, the box had a lever for rats or a disk in one wall for pigeons. A press on this manipulandum could deliver food to the animal through an opening in the wall. Responses reinforced in this way increased in frequency. By controlling this reinforcement together with discriminative stimuli such as lights and tones, experimenters studied schedules of reinforcement and punishment.
Skinner designed the cumulative recorder for use with the operant chamber as a convenient way to record responses. In this device, a sheet of paper gradually unrolls over a cylinder. Each response steps a small pen across the paper starting at one edge. When the pen reaches the other edge, it quickly resets to the initial side. The slope of the resulting ink line graphically displays the rate of the response. Rapid responses yield a steeply sloping line on the paper while slow responding yields a line of low slope. This tool enabled great progress on problems that could be studied by measuring the rate of simple repeatable responses.
The air crib is an easily cleaned temperature and humidity controlled box bed intended to replace the standard infant crib. After raising one baby, Skinner felt that he could simplify the process for parents and improve the experience for children. He primarily thought of the idea to help his wife cope with the day-to-day tasks of child rearing. Keeping the child warm was a central priority since he lived in Minnesota where the environment was rough. Though this was the main goal, it also was designed to reduce laundry diaper rash and cradle cap.
Reportedly it had some success in these goals as it was advertised commercially with an estimate of 300 children who were raised in the air crib. Psychology Today tracked down 50 children and ran a short piece on the effects of the air crib. The reports came back positive and that these children and parents enjoyed using the crib. The air crib was controversial however. It was popularly characterized as a cruel pen and often compared to Skinner's operant conditioning chamber. A picture published with an article showed the Skinners' daughter Deborah peering out of the crib with her hands and face pressed upon the glass.
During World War II the US Navy required a weapon effective against surface ships such as the German Bismarck class battleships. Although missile and TV technology existed the size of the primitive guidance systems available rendered automatic guidance impractical. To solve this problem Skinner initiated Project Pigeon which was intended to provide a simple and effective guidance system. Skinner trained pigeons through operant conditioning to peck a camera obscura screen showing incoming targets on individual screens.
This system divided the nose cone of a missile into three compartments with a pigeon placed in each. Within the ship the three lenses projected an image of distant objects onto a screen in front of each bird. When the missile was launched from an aircraft within sight of an enemy ship an image of the ship would appear on the screen. The screen was hinged which connected the screens to the bomb's guidance system. This was done through four small rubber pneumatic tubes that were attached to each side of the frame. Resulting in the missile being guided towards the targeted ship through just the peck coming from the pigeon. Despite an effective demonstration the project was abandoned before it could be used in the field.
Skinner is popularly known mainly for his books Walden Two published in 1948 and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. The former describes a fictional experimental community in 1940s United States. The productivity and happiness of citizens in this community is far greater than in the outside world because the residents practice scientific social planning. They use operant conditioning in raising their children. Walden Two champions a lifestyle that does not support war or foster competition and social strife.
It encourages a lifestyle of minimal consumption rich social relationships personal happiness satisfying work and leisure. In 1967 Kat Kinkade and others founded the Twin Oaks Community using Walden Two as a blueprint. The community still exists and continues to use the Planner-Manager system and other aspects of the community described in Skinner's book. Behavior modification is not a community practice today but the core philosophy remains influential. Skinner described his novel as my New Atlantis in reference to Bacon's utopia.
American linguist Noam Chomsky published a review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior in the linguistics journal Language in 1959. Chomsky argued that Skinner's attempt to use behaviorism to explain human language amounted to little more than word games. Conditioned responses could not account for a child's ability to create or understand an infinite variety of novel sentences. Chomsky's review has been credited with launching the cognitive revolution in psychology and other disciplines.
Skinner who rarely responded directly to critics never formally replied to Chomsky's critique. He endorsed Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1972 reply instead. Many academics in the 1960s believed that Skinner's silence on the question meant Chomsky's criticism had been justified. But MacCorquodale wrote that Chomsky's criticism did not focus on Skinner's Verbal Behavior but rather attacked a confusion of ideas from behavioral psychology. Chomsky also reviewed Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity using the same basic motives as his Verbal Behavior review. Among Chomsky's criticisms were that Skinner's laboratory work could not be extended to humans.
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Common questions
When was Burrhus Frederic Skinner born and where?
Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on the 20th of March 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father William Skinner worked as a lawyer while his mother Grace managed their household.
What is the purpose of the operant conditioning chamber known as the Skinner box?
The operant conditioning chamber known as the Skinner box allows experimenters to study schedules of reinforcement and punishment by controlling responses through manipulanda like levers or disks. Pressing these controls delivers food to animals such as rats or pigeons, which increases the frequency of reinforced behaviors.
Why did B. F. Skinner design the air crib for infants?
Skinner designed the air crib to simplify child rearing tasks for parents and improve the experience for children by providing temperature and humidity control. The device aimed to keep children warm in rough environments like Minnesota while reducing issues such as diaper rash and cradle cap.
How did Project Pigeon use birds to guide missiles during World War II?
Project Pigeon trained pigeons through operant conditioning to peck at screens showing incoming targets within missile nose cones. When the missile launched, lenses projected images onto screens connected to pneumatic tubes that guided the weapon toward enemy ships based on the birds' pecks.
What was the outcome of Noam Chomsky's 1959 review of Verbal Behavior?
Noam Chomsky published a review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior in the linguistics journal Language in 1959 arguing that conditioned responses could not explain human language acquisition. This critique is credited with launching the cognitive revolution in psychology despite Skinner never formally replying directly to it.